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Title: The Psychological Origin and the Nature of Religion
Author: James H. Leuba
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RELIGIONS ANCIENT AND MODERN
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ORIGIN
AND THE NATURE OF RELIGION
RELIGIONS: ANCIENT AND MODERN
Animism. By EDWARD CLODD, author of _The Story of Creation_.
Pantheism. By JAMES ALLANSON PICTON, author of _The Religion of the
Universe_.
The Religions of Ancient China. By Professor GILES, LL.D., Professor of
Chinese in the University of Cambridge.
The Religion of Ancient Greece. By JANE HARRISON, Lecturer at Newnham
College, Cambridge, author of _Prolegomena to Study of Greek Religion_.
Islam. By the Rt. Hon. AMEER ALI SYED, of the Judicial Committee of His
Majesty's Privy Council, author of _The Spirit of Islam_ and _Ethics of
Islam_.
Magic and Fetishism. By Dr. A. C. HADDON, F.R.S., Lecturer on Ethnology at
Cambridge University.
The Religion of Ancient Egypt. By Professor W. M. FLINDERS PETRIE, F.R.S.
The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria. By THEOPHILUS G. PINCHES, late of
the British Museum.
Early Buddhism. By Professor RHYS DAVIDS, LL.D., late Secretary of The
Royal Asiatic Society.
Hinduism. By Dr. L. D. BARNETT, of the Department of Oriental Printed
Books and MSS., British Museum.
Scandinavian Religion. By WILLIAM A. CRAIGIE, Joint Editor of the _Oxford
English Dictionary_.
Celtic Religion. By Professor ANWYL, Professor of Welsh at University
College, Aberystwyth.
The Mythology of Ancient Britain and Ireland. By CHARLES SQUIRE, author of
_The Mythology of the British Islands_.
Judaism. By ISRAEL ABRAHAMS, Lecturer in Talmudic Literature in Cambridge
University, author of _Jewish Life in the Middle Ages_.
The Religion of Ancient Rome. By CYRIL BAILEY, M.A.
Shinto, The Ancient Religion of Japan. By W. G. ASTON, C. M. G.
The Religion of Ancient Mexico and Peru. By LEWIS SPENCE, M.A.
Early Christianity. By S. B. BLACK, Professor at M'Gill University.
The Psychological Origin and Nature of Religion. By Professor J. H. LEUBA.
The Religion of Ancient Palestine. By STANLEY A. COOK.
Mithraism. By W. J. PHYTHIAN-ADAMS.
PHILOSOPHIES
Early Greek Philosophy. By A. W. BENN, author of _The Philosophy of
Greece, Rationalism in the Nineteenth Century_.
Stoicism. By Professor ST. GEORGE STOCK, author of _Deductive Logic_,
editor of the _Apology of Plato_, etc.
Plato. By Professor A. E. TAYLOR, St. Andrews University, author of _The
Problem of Conduct_.
Scholasticism. By Father RICKABY, S.J.
Hobbes. By Professor A. E. TAYLOR.
Locke. By Professor ALEXANDER, of Owens College.
Comte and Mill. By T. WHITTAKER, author of _The Neoplatonists Apollonius
of Tyana and other Essays_.
Herbert Spencer. By W. H. HUDSON, author of _An Introduction to Spencer's
Philosophy_.
Schopenhauer. By T. WHITTAKER.
Berkeley. By Professor CAMPBELL FRASER, D.C.L., LL.D.
Swedenborg. By Dr. SEWALL.
Nietzsche: His Life and Works. By ANTHONY M. LUDOVICH.
Bergson. By JOSEPH SOLOMON.
Rationalism. By J. M. ROBERTSON.
Pragmatism. By D. L. MURRAY.
Rudolf Eucken. By W. TUDOR-JONES.
Epicurus. By Professor A. E. TAYLOR.
William James. By HOWARD V. KNOX.
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ORIGIN
AND THE NATURE OF RELIGION
By JAMES H. LEUBA
BRYN MAWR COLLEGE, U.S.A.
LONDON
CONSTABLE & COMPANY LTD
10 AND 12 ORANGE STREET LEICESTER SQUARE W.C.2
1921
PREFACE
This little book, the last of a series of similar volumes each containing
an exposition by a recognised authority of one of the many Religions the
world has known, might have been put with as much propriety at the head of
the series, there to show how Religion originated in the mind of man, what
mental powers it presupposes, what is its nature and what its relation to
the non-religious life. But one is, no doubt, better able to take up
profitably these problems after having familiarised oneself with the
several aspects of religious life. Therefore _The Psychological Origin and
the Nature of Religion_ was placed at the end, where it fulfils the
additional purpose of linking the concluded series of Histories of
Religions with a cognate one, now being prepared by the same publishers,
on Ancient and Modern Systems of Philosophy.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. THE FUNDAMENTAL NATURE OF RELIGION, 1
II. THREE TYPES OF BEHAVIOUR DIFFERENTIATED, 11
III. ORIGIN OF THE IDEAS OF GHOSTS, NATURE-BEINGS, AND GODS, 39
IV. MAGIC AND RELIGION, 48
Magic classified, 49
Two Theses maintained: (1) the probable priority of Magic;
(2) the independence of Religion from Magic, 53
Magic and Religion combine, but never fuse, 65
What did Magic contribute to the making of Religion? 68
Magic and the Origin of Science, 74
V. THE ORIGINAL EMOTION OF PRIMITIVE RELIGIOUS LIFE, 80
VI. CONCLUDING REMARKS ON THE NATURE AND THE FUNCTION OF
RELIGION, 87
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ORIGIN AND THE NATURE OF RELIGION
CHAPTER I
THE FUNDAMENTAL NATURE OF RELIGION
The opinions advanced in this essay and the arguments with which they are
supported will be more readily appreciated if the fundamental nature of
Religion is set forth in a few introductory pages.
The students of Religion have usually been content to describe it either
in intellectual or in affective terms. 'This particular idea or belief,'
or 'this particular feeling or emotion,' is, they have said, 'the essence'
or the 'vital element' of Religion. So that most of the hundreds of
definitions which have been proposed fall into two classes. We have, on
the one hand, the definitions of Spencer, Max Müller, Romanes, Goblet
d'Alviella, and others, for whom Religion is 'the recognition of a
mystery pressing for interpretation,' or 'a department of thought,' or 'a
belief in superhuman beings'; and, on the other, the formulas of
Schleiermacher, the Ritschlian theologians, Tiele, etc., who hold that
Religion is 'a feeling of absolute dependence upon God,' or 'that pure and
reverential disposition or frame of mind we call piety.' According to
Tiele, 'the essence of piety, and, therefore, the essence of Religion, is
adoration.'
The recent advance of psychological science and the increasingly careful
and minute work of ethnographists have tended to discredit these one-sided
conceptions. To-day it has become customary to admit that 'in Religion all
sides of the personality participate. Will, feeling, and intelligence are
necessary and inseparable constituents of Religion.' But statements such
as this one do not necessarily imply a correct understanding of the
functional relation of the three aspects of psychic life. One may be
acquainted with the three branches of government--legislative, executive,
and judicial--and nevertheless grossly misunderstand their respective
functions. Pfleiderer, for instance, hastens to add to the sentences last
quoted, 'Of course we must recognise that knowing and willing are here
[in religion] not ends in themselves, as in science and in morality, but
rather subordinate to feeling as the real centre of religious
consciousness.' Thus feeling reappears as _the real centre_ of religious
consciousness. What the author may well have meant here by 'centre,' _I_
do not know. A similar criticism is applicable to Max Müller and to Guyau.
The latter begins promisingly with a criticism of the one-sided formulas
of Schleiermacher and of Feuerbach, and declares that they should be
combined. 'The religious sentiment,' says he, is 'primarily no doubt a
feeling of dependence. But this feeling of dependence really to give birth
to Religion must provoke in one a reaction--a desire for deliverance.'
Very good, indeed! But, on proceeding, the reader discovers that the
opinion the book defends is that 'Religion is the outcome of an effort to
explain all things--physical, metaphysical, and moral--by analogies drawn
from human society, imaginatively and symbolically considered. In short,
it is a universal, sociological hypothesis, mythical in form.'[1] What is
this but once more the intellectualistic position? Religion arising from
an effort to _explain_; Religion an _hypothesis_! It is Herbert Spencer
over again with an additional statement concerning the way in which man
attempts to explain 'the mystery pressing for interpretation.'
It must be admitted, however, that several of the more recent definitions
have completely broken with this bad psychology. Among these are those of
J. G. Frazer, of A. Sabatier, and of William James. The first understands
by Religion 'propitiation, or conciliation of powers superior to man,
which are believed to direct and control the course of nature and of human
life.'[2] For A. Sabatier, Religion 'is a commerce, a conscious and willed
relation into which the soul in distress enters with the mysterious power
on which it feels that it and its destiny depend.'[3] William James
expresses his mind thus: 'In broadest and most general terms possible, one
might say that religious life consists in the belief that there is an
unseen order, and that our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting
ourselves thereto. This belief and this adjustment are the religious
attitude of the soul. In the ordinary sense of the word, however, no
attitude is accounted religious unless it be grave and serious; the
trifling, sneering attitude of a Voltaire must be thrown out if we would
not strain the ordinary use of language. Moreover, there must be something
solemn, serious, and tender about any attitude which we denominate
Religion. If glad, it must not grin or snigger; if sad, it must not scream
or curse. The sallies of a Schopenhauer and a Nietzsche lack the
purgatorial note which religious sadness gives forth. And finally we must
exclude also the chilling reflections of Marcus Aurelius on the eternal
reason, as well as the passionate outcry of Job.'[4]
But the battle against intellectualistic and affectivistic conceptions of
Religion is not yet won. The recent definitions of Tiele and of Kaftan
show only too clearly how strong the tendency remains to identify Religion
with some feeling or emotion.
* * * * *
As the amazing discrepancies and contradictions offered by authorised
definitions of Religion arise, in my opinion, primarily from a faulty
psychology, a moment may profitably be devoted to an untechnical statement
of the present teaching of that science upon the relation existing
between the three acknowledged modes of consciousness--willing, feeling,
and thinking.
Aristotle characterised man as _thinking-desire_. In swinging back from
Intellectualism to Voluntarism, modern psychology has accepted the
fundamental truth excellently expressed by the Greek philosopher. 'Will is
not merely a function which sometimes accrues to consciousness, and is
sometimes lacking; it is an integral property of consciousness.'[5] Will
without intelligence may be possible; but intelligence without will is
not, not even in the case of so-called disinterested, theoretical
thinking. There is, there can be, no thinking without desire, intention,
or purpose. 'The one thing that stands out,' says, for instance, Professor
Dewey, 'is that thinking is inquiry, and that knowledge as science is the
outcome of systematically directed inquiry.' Thought absolutely undirected
would be not even a dream--mere meaningless, chaotic atoms of thought. It
is _the intention_, _the purpose_, which makes thought what it is; that is
to say, significant. We think because we will. Thought does not exist for
itself; it is the instrument of desire. To discover ways and means of
gratifying proximate or distant desires, needs, cravings, is the function
of intelligence. The psychologist speaks, therefore, of the _instrumental_
character of thought, and considers cognition to be a function of conduct.
The mastery of desire over thought is abundantly illustrated in the
history of belief, and nowhere so strikingly as in Religion.
With regard to the relation of feeling to the will and to the intellect,
it is to be observed that where there is desire for an object, there
liking is present; and, conversely, where there is liking, there actual or
potential desire is felt. As to sentiments and emotions, they involve
ideas and conative elements in addition to sensations and feelings. An
emotion is a reaction, the response of an organism to a situation. It is a
form of action. Aristotle's characterisation of man is thus seen to be
adequate; it does not leave out the feelings, as it might seem at first.
Thinking-desire includes the affection since it is included in desire.
Every pulse of consciousness is psychically compounded of will, feeling,
and thought. Successive moments can differ one from the other neither in
the absence of one or two of these three constituents, nor in the
essential relation they bear to one another--that is fixed and
unchangeable--but only in the intensity and vividness of their respective
components. This, then, is the double teaching of psychology in this
matter:--(1) Will, feeling, and thought enter in some degree into every
moment of consciousness which can be looked upon as an actuality, and not
merely as an abstraction; they are necessary constituents of
consciousness. The unit of conscious life is neither thought, nor feeling,
nor will, but all three in movement towards an object. (2) The will is
primal; or, in other words, conscious life is always oriented towards
something to be secured or avoided immediately or ultimately.
If, with this conception in mind, we turn to Religion, we shall understand
it to be compounded of will, thought, and feeling, bearing to each other
the relation which belongs to them in every department of life. And it
will, moreover, be clear that a purpose or an ideal, _i.e._ something to
be attained or maintained, must always be at the root of it. The outcome
of the application of current psychological teaching to religious life is,
then, to lead us to regard Religion as a particular kind of activity, as a
mode or type of behaviour, and to make it as impossible for us to identify
it with a particular emotion or with a particular belief, as it would be
to identify, let us say, family life with affection, or to define trade
as 'belief in the productivity of exchange'; or commerce as 'greed touched
with a feeling of dependence upon society.' And yet this last definition
is no less informing and adequate than the far-famed formula of Matthew
Arnold, which I forbear to repeat. We shall, however, have to remember
that Religion is multiform, and that certain ideas, emotions, and purposes
appear in it prominently at certain moments, and other ideas, emotions,
and purposes at other times. But neither prominence nor predominance is
synonymous with 'essence' or with 'vital element.'
I do not intend, at this stage of our inquiry, to offer a complete
definition of Religion. But I must guard against a possible
misinterpretation. In speaking of Religion as an activity, or as a type of
behaviour, I would not be understood to exclude from it whatever does not
express itself in overt acts, in rites of propitiation, submission, or
adoration. For, just as man's relations with his fellow-men are not all
directly expressed, or expressible, in actions, so his relations with
gods, or their impersonal substitutes, may not have any visible form; they
may remain purely subjective and none the less exercise a definite guiding
and inspiring influence over his life.
The adjectives _passive_ and _active_ might be used to separate amorphous
from organised Religion, _i.e._ the feeling-attitude from the behaviour.
'Passive,' used in this connection, would mean simply that the person does
not actively seek those advantages the gods might procure, but is content
to be acted upon by them.
_Unorganised religiosity_ must be, it seems, the necessary precursor of
organised Religion; it is its larval stage. But it does not by any means
disappear from society when a system of definite relations with gods, or
with impersonal sources of religious inspiration, has been developed. In
all societies there is always a large number of people who live in the
limbo of organised Religion. They are open to the influence of religious
agents, in which they believe more or less cold-heartedly, without ever
entering into definite and fixed relations with them.
CHAPTER II
THREE TYPES OF BEHAVIOUR DIFFERENTIATED
In his dealings with the different kinds of objects or forces with which
he is, or thinks himself, in relation, man has developed three distinct
types of behaviour. A concrete illustration will bring them before us more
forcibly than an abstract characterisation. A stoker in the hold of a
ship, throwing coal into the furnace, represents one of them. His purpose
is to produce propelling energy. The amount of coal he shovels in,
together with the air-draught, the condition of the boiler and other
factors of the same sort, determine, as he understands the matter, the
velocity of the ship. The same man, playing cards of an evening, and
having lost uninterruptedly for a long time, might get up and walk round
the table backwards in order to change his luck. He would then illustrate
a second mode of behaviour. If a storm threatens to sink the ship, our
stoker might be seen falling on his knees, lifting his hands to heaven,
and addressing in passionate words an invisible being. These are the three
differentiated kinds of responses he has learned to make, the three ways
by which he endeavours to make use of the forces about him in his struggle
for the preservation and the enrichment of life. We may designate them
as--
1. The mechanical behaviour.
2. The coercitive behaviour, or Magic.
3. The anthropopathic behaviour, which includes Religion.
The mechanical behaviour differs from the anthropopathic by the absence of
any reference to personal beings. In the sphere in which it obtains,
threats and presents are equally ineffective. It implies instead the
practical--not the theoretical--recognition of a fairly definite and
constant quantitative relation between cause and effect. If science is to
be provided with an ancestor, and only with one, it should be this first
type of behaviour rather than Magic. For, the moment the existence of the
fixed quantitative relations, implicitly acknowledged in the first type of
behaviour, is explicitly recognised, science is born. Magic separates
itself, on the one hand, from the mechanical behaviour by the absence of
implied quantitative relations, and, on the other hand, from
anthropopathic behaviour by the failure to use means of personal
influence; punishment and reward are just as foreign to Magic as to
mechanical behaviour. As to the anthropopathic type of activity, it
includes the ordinary relations of men with men as well as those with
gods. One's frame of mind and behaviour when dealing with a human person,
especially if exalted far above us, resembles Religion so closely that it
is proper to place them in the same class.
Mechanical behaviour and Religion are, obviously, by far the most common
and important modes of activity among civilised peoples, whereas in
primitive culture the coercitive behaviour (Magic) is everywhere in
evidence and Religion may be practically unknown. As one ascends from the
lowest stages of culture, Magic gradually loses official recognition.
Among us, though it leads only a surreptitious existence, it has by no
means lost all influence. The list of magical superstitions that have
retained a hold among us would be found tediously long. A numerous class
of them includes the gambler's methods of securing luck. So-called
'religious' practices may really be magical. The cross, the rosary,
relics, and other accessories of Religion, acquire in the mind of many
Christians a power of the coercitive type; that is, for instance, the case
when the sign of the cross, of itself, without the mediation of God or
Saint, is felt to have power; or when 'saying one's beads' is held to
possess a curative virtue of the kind ascribed to sacred relics by the
superstitious. Even when the symbolism of the sign of the cross, and the
meaning of the _Ave Maria_ are realised, it happens not infrequently that
signing oneself and saying one's beads are regarded as acting upon the
Virgin Mary, Jesus Christ, or God, in the manner of an incantation _i.e._
magically.
* * * * *
It has been the habit of most students of the origin of Religion to
concern themselves exclusively with the origin of the god-idea, as if
belief in the existence of gods was identical with Religion. They have
ignored its other essential components: the motives or desires and the
feelings, as well as the means by which, in Religion, the gratification of
desire is sought. But the limitation of the problem of origin to that of
the god-idea is not entirely amiss. For there are neither specifically
religious motives, nor specifically religious feelings. Any and every
human need and longing may, at some stage or other, become a spring of
Religion, and conversely the feelings and emotions met with in any form of
Religion appear also in non-religious experience. As to the practical
means of securing the favour of the gods, it is agreed that they were at
the beginning essentially the same as those men were already in the habit
of using in their relations with their fellow-men. It is the Agent or the
Power with which man thinks himself in relation, and through whom he
endeavours to secure the gratification of his desires, which alone is
distinctive of religious life. And so the origin of the idea of gods,
though not identical with the origin of Religion, is at any rate its
central problem.
In the preceding remarks, as also in practically all writings on the
origin of Religion, it is assumed that the god-concept precedes, in the
mind of man, the establishment of Religion. This opinion is, as we shall
see, the correct one. But it cannot be taken as a matter of course.
Actions may become established in other ways. Our first problem is to
discover how Religion arose, and what psychological capacities and
conceptions it implies.
A comparative study of the three modes of behaviour is, after all, the
shortest way of gaining a satisfactory understanding of the origin of
Religion.
* * * * *
_What are the abstract conceptions necessary to the establishment of the
three modes of behaviour?_--There is usually little difficulty in
determining what end any particular action is intended to secure. It is
quite otherwise if one wishes to ascertain the nature of the power from
which the desired effect is supposed to proceed. The philosopher,
suffering from the illusion to which his class is subject, is in danger of
imagining the presence of highly abstract notions where much simpler
mental processes actually take place. A comparatively easy way of getting
oneself disentangled from these high-flown interpretations and of
ascertaining what is the intellectual minimum really involved in these
types of behaviour, is to examine them in the least developed men known to
us, or, better still--if they are to be found there--among animals. Let us
accordingly turn for a moment to animal behaviour with the intention of
determining what ideas of power, or of agency, are involved in their modes
of action, and thus take a preliminary step towards the solution of our
problem.
Apes, dogs, beavers, in fact all the higher animals, show by their
behaviour a 'working understanding' of the more common physical forces.
They estimate weight, resistance, heat, distance, etc., and adapt their
actions more or less exactly to these factors when climbing, swinging at
the end of boughs, breaking, carrying, etc. I remember observing a
chimpanzee trying to recover a stick which had fallen through the bars of
his cage and rolled beyond the reach of his arm. He looked around, walked
deliberately to the corner of the cage, picked up a piece of burlap, and
threw the end of it over the stick. Then, pulling gently, he made the
stick roll until near enough for him to get hold of it with his hand. This
ape dealt successfully with physical forces. Towards animals and men,
animal behaviour is quite different. A dog will beg from a man; he will
not beg from a ham suspended out of his reach. Towards animals and men,
animal behaviour is similar to that of men when dealing with invisible
anthropopathic beings.
One may well believe that the inner experiences of animals differ in these
modes of behaviour as much as their external movements. The feelings and
emotions which appear in a dog's intercourse with his master are of the
same species, if not of the same variety, as those felt by man when he
deals with his fellow-men and with superhuman beings. Certain highly
gifted animals feel blame and approbation, independently of physical
punishment or reward, and attach themselves to their masters with a
devoted affection possessing all the marks of altruism. The higher animals
do, then, without any doubt, practise both the mechanical and the
anthropopathic types of behaviour, but they exercise the latter only
towards _actually present_ persons or animals. We shall have to consider
subsequently the significant psychological difference to which this fact
points.
But, is there no trace in animal life of the coercitive behaviour? I know
of none, though some perplexity might be caused by certain reactions
animals learn under the tuition of man. What shall be said, for instance,
of a dog who has learned to raise its forepaws when he wishes to be
liberated from confinement under circumstances making the person causing
the door to open invisible to him? Is this magical behaviour? There is
certainly no quantitative nor any qualitative relation between lifting up
the forepaws and the opening of a door, neither is there any visible
continuity between cause and effect. That the dog's action is not
determined, in this instance, in the same way as that of a magician,
appears when it is observed that whereas the latter would perform the same
magical rite in a great variety of external circumstances, the dog will
seek liberation by lifting its paws only when in the particular cage in
which he has learned the trick, or in one very much like it.[6] But more
about this presently. It is not to be overlooked that without the
interference of man, the dog would never have learned to perform this
quasi-magical trick. This illustration serves, if no other purpose, at
least to indicate how apparently slight is the impediment which prevents
the higher animals from setting up a magical art.
It may be a matter for astonishment that two complicated and effective
modes of reaction are arrived at by animals in the absence of abstract
ideas about forces. Yet so it is; before any speculation on power, before
any induction or deduction, before any abstract notion of the nature of
spirit and matter, animals have learned to deal quite well with what we
call physical and personal forces. How did they do it? The study under
experimental conditions of the establishment of new reactions in animals
reveals the process very clearly. Imagine a cat shut up in a cage, the
door of which can be opened by pressing down a latch. When weary of
confinement the cat begins to claw, pull, and bite, here, there, and
everywhere. After half an hour, or an hour of this purposive, but
unreasoned, activity, he chances to put his paw upon the latch and
escapes. If again put into the cage, he does not seem to know any better
than before how to proceed. Yet something has been gained by the first
experience. For now he directs his clawing, pulling, and biting more
frequently towards the part of the cage occupied by the latch. Because of
this improvement he finds himself released sooner than the first time. The
repetition of the experiment shows the cat learning to bring his movements
to bear more and more exclusively upon the door or its immediate
surroundings. Ultimately he will have learned to make just the necessary
movement and no other. In this gradual exclusion of useless movements, the
cat is guided entirely by results. The psycho-physiological endowment
required for acquisitions of this kind involves no abstract ideas but only
(1) the desire to escape; (2) the impulse and ability to perform the
various movements we have named; (3) an indefinite remembrance of the
position occupied when success was achieved, combined with a tendency to
repeat the same movements when in the same situation.
The method illustrated above by which animals learn to deal with forces in
the midst of which they live has a much wider range of application in
human existence than is generally supposed. Man's fundamental mode of
learning is also the unreflective, experimental, one in which frequent
blind attempts and chance successes slowly lead to the elimination of
ineffective movements. Would you convince yourself of the vastly
exaggerated rôle ascribed to abstract ideas and to logical processes in
ordinary human behaviour, inquire how 'power' is conceived of by those who
use it. What is in the mind of the stoker when he thinks of the power of
coal? What in the mind of the gambler when he tries to coerce fate? What
in the mind of the necromancer when he summons the shades of spirits?
Nothing definite beyond a knowledge of what is to be done in order to
secure the desired results and the anticipation of these results them
selves. The stoker thinks of what he sees and feels: the coal, in burning,
gives heat; the heat makes the water boil; the steam pushes the
piston-rod, and so forth. Each one of the successive links in the chain is
vaguely thought of by him as striving to bring about the following one.
That is how he understands the coal-power. And what does the ordinary
person know, for instance, about electricity? Simply what is to be done in
order to start the dynamo, light the lamp, switch the current, and what
the effect will be in each case, nothing more. The superstitious person,
whether belonging to a primitive tribe or to the Anglo-Saxon civilisation
of the twentieth century, understands in no other than this practical way
the forces he deals with. I remember the delight shown by an elderly lady
when a brood of swallows fell down our sitting-room chimney. 'It will
bring luck to the household,' said she. I did my best, patiently and in
several ways, to ascertain the sort of notion the lady had regarding the
nature of the power that was to bring about the fortunate events
predicted, and also to discover her idea of the connection existing
between the fall of the swallows and the exertion of the 'power' in our
behalf. I had to come to the conclusion that there was no idea whatsoever
in her mind beyond those expressed by 'swallows-down-the-chimney' and
'happy-events-coming.' These two ideas were in her mind directly
associated. When I declared my inability to see the causal connection
between the two, she complained of my abnormal critical sense! Nothing
more than the immediate association of an antecedent with its consequent
need be looked for in the mind of most civilised, superstitious persons,
and, of course, nothing more in the mind of a savage. That is sufficient
for practical purposes.
The words 'matter' and 'spirit' wield a very considerable influence among
us; what do they mean to most of those who use them? Physical science
ascribes either extension alone, or extension and weight, to physical
substances. Non-material forces are, then, according to science, both
spaceless and weightless. I will venture to affirm that not one educated
person in a thousand is acquainted with this distinction. Most of the few
who have known it have forgotten it. So that the words 'matter' and
'spirit' mean different things to the philosopher and to the layman. In
the popular mind, if spirits are not perceptible it is because the senses
are not sufficiently acute. Spirits are here or there, diffused over wide
areas or concentrated in narrow spaces. The average Christian, whatever he
may say to the contrary, is, theoretically speaking, a materialist, and, I
might add, a polytheist. Whatever matter and spirit mean to him, and they
certainly have a substantial meaning, the distinction made by the
philosopher is for him non-existent. The following facts may be of some
interest in this connection. A few years ago, in a conversation with a
shop-clerk, I happened to mention a lead coffin made hermetic with solder.
He was shocked, and objected to a dead body being shut up in a coffin of
that description because it prevented the escape of the soul. This man had
had an ordinary grammar-school education. Here are two quotations taken
from answers of American College students to questions requesting a
description of their idea of God. It should be added that the questions
were given only to classes which had not yet taken up, or were just
beginning the study of philosophy. 'God, to me, is a being of flesh and
blood, for without this form he would seem unnatural and unsympathetic as
our leader.' (Female, twenty years old.)--'I think of God as real, actual
flesh and blood and bones, something we shall all see with our eyes some
day.' (Male, twenty-one years old.) Together with these, and from the same
classes of students, came a great number of very different answers; for
instance this, 'God is an impersonal being.... I think of him as the
embodiment of natural laws.' Descartes' conception may serve as a point of
comparison: 'What the soul itself was, I either did not stay to consider,
or, if I did, I imagined that it was something extremely rare and subtle,
like wind or flame, or ether, spread through my grosser parts.'[7]
If the philosophical distinction between matter and spirit is not
ordinarily made, these terms express none the less a very definite
practical meaning of prime importance: they mark the difference between
forces that are not responsive to psychic influences (desire and emotion,
ethical and æsthetic considerations) and those that are.
* * * * *
The trial-and-error method which serves to establish the efficient modes
of behaviour observed in animals is so far reaching in its possibilities
that one might be tempted to regard it as accounting for the existence of
Magic and of Religion. Were this theory tenable, the origin of the three
modes of human behaviour would have been brought back to one method of
learning, the unreasoning, trial-and-error method. But even a superficial
consideration discovers insuperable obstacles in the way of this
enticingly simple explanation, and compels the admission that magical art
and Religion involve the operation of mental powers not required for the
establishment of the mechanical, and of the non-religious anthropopathic
behaviours.
The first of the two differences I intend to bring out, is that if a
particular action is to be learned by an animal, the gratification of the
actuating desire must follow immediately, or nearly so, upon the
performance of the successful act, and be frequently repeated at short
intervals; whereas in man, as far as Magic and Religion are concerned, the
results may follow quite irregularly upon the performance, often only long
after, and, not infrequently, not at all. Had not the door opened every
time the cat pressed the latch, but, let us say, only once every ten
times, or, if every time, one week after the movement, he would never
have learned to make his escape. No more would he have acquired the trick,
had he not been placed in the cage repeatedly and at short intervals. An
interesting instance of the gradual undoing of a habit in consequence of
the absence of the sensory results for the sake and under the guidance of
which the action had been learned, is reported by Lloyd Morgan.[8] He had
brought up in his study a brood of ducks. They had had a bath every
morning in a tin tray. After a while, the tray was placed empty in its
accustomed place. The ducks got into it and went through all their
ordinary ablutions. The next day, they again enjoyed the missing water,
but not as long as on the first day. On the third day they gave up the
useless practice of bathing in an empty tray.
In three days ducklings eliminate a habit which has become useless,
whereas generations after generations of men have gone through
innumerable, time-wasting, often costly and painful ceremonies for results
rarely secured, and, as we think, never directly secured by the magical or
the religious ceremonies themselves. There is here a curious point of
psychology: animals establish habits under the guidance of immediate
results while man develops the magical art and Religion _despite_ the
usual absence of the results sought after. The very possibility of
deceiving himself reveals the superiority of man over animals, for
self-deception requires a degree of independence from sense-observation, a
capacity of constructive imagination, a susceptibility to auto-suggestion,
not to be found in animals. That the first glimmer of these capacities
should have plunged man in the darkness of primitive Magic and Religion,
and made him the ridiculous fool he appears to be by the side of the
matter-of-fact, intelligent animal is, however, a very striking and
singular fact.
If the constant and immediate appearance of the desired results does not
seem necessary to the establishment of Magic and Religion, it should not
be thought, however, that these arts are altogether useless. On the
contrary, they are, even independently of the results at which they aim,
of a most substantial value to the cause of individual and social
development. Let it be said first, concerning the expected results, that
they happen more frequently, perhaps, than I may have seemed to imply.
When, for instance, the rain ceremonies are performed during a spell of
dry weather, success, more or less distant, always crowns the efforts of
the magicians: the rain does come and the earth does bring forth its
fruits. The ceremonies for the healing of disease are often followed by
the recovery of the patient, however absurd the treatment may have been.
One should not forget, in this connection, the considerable effect of
suggestion upon the credulous savage. Many cures are, no doubt, performed
in this manner by the medicine-man. Davenport, speaking of tribes of Puget
Sound, says: 'Their cure for disease consists in the members of the cult
shaking in a circle about a sick person, dressed in ceremonial costume.
The religious practitioner waves a cloth in front of the patient, with a
gentle fanning motion, and, blowing at the same time, proceeds to drive
the disease out of the body, beginning at the feet and working upward. The
assistant stands ready to seize the disease with his cloth when it is
driven out of the head! And they are able to boast of many real cures.'[9]
A psychologist is not inclined to doubt the report of Curr, that among the
aborigines of Victoria persons who knew themselves to have been devoted to
destruction with magical ceremonies have pined away and died,[10] nor
that of Howitt, who, alluding to the habit of the medicine-men of certain
tribes to knock a man insensible in order to remove the kidney fat for
magical purposes, writes, 'In the Kurnai tribe men have died believing
themselves to have been deprived of their fat.'[11]
But the intended results form only a part, and that perhaps not the most
important, of the gains to be credited to the practice of Magic and of
Religion. The most noteworthy of these unsought by-products are:--(1) The
gratification of the lust for power. The Magician and the Priest are
mediators between superior, mysterious powers and their fellow-men. The
sense of mastery over, or communion with, these powers, and the respect
and fear with which Magicians and Priests are regarded, are, of
themselves, almost sufficient to keep up these practices.(2) Both these
modes of behaviour, but especially Magic, appeal to the gambling instinct.
All men crave excitement; the savage is no exception. In the daring game
in which the rain-maker or the disease-healer engages, the high tension
of the gambling-table is, to a certain extent, present. (3) Less obvious,
perhaps, than the preceding advantages, but not less valuable, is the
general mental stimulation induced by Magic and Religion. Magic is the
great social play of the savage. If animal plays serve a highly valuable
purpose in affording practice in sense-observation and motor-co-ordination,
Magic makes its chief call upon the imagination; in this consists one of
its most far-reaching values. It becomes a training for the achievement of
those higher mental syntheses requiring the momentary disregard of the
actual sense-impressions, from which it is so difficult to liberate
oneself, in behalf of the accumulated experience of a whole life.
The second objection to the assumption that the trial-and-error method
could have led to the establishment of magical and religious habits arises
from the inability of animals to act towards unperceived objects as if
they were actually present. A dog never welcomes by gambols or licks the
hand of an absent friend, while Religion, and at times Magic, show
primitive man in more or less systematic relations with powers he has
never sensed. When the Shaman draws lines upon the sand, describes
various curves with his arms, utters sundry incantations, he does not
address a power he perceives, nor even one he has really seen, although he
may believe that he, or some one else, has seen it. That animals are moved
to action by memories of past perceptions, is, of course, not open to
doubt. Their whole life is a long testimony to that ability. Any one will
recall instances of chains of concerted actions indicating clearly, on the
part of some one of the higher animals, domesticated or wild, the
anticipation of a particular person, object, or event. What they never do,
is to behave as if the remembered object was really present, though not
sensed. H. Spencer, discussing adversely A. Comte's opinion that
fetichistic conceptions are formed by the higher animals, relates the
following observation concerning a retriever who had learned for herself
to perform an 'act of propitiation.' She had associated the fetching of
game with the pleasure of the person to whom she brought it, and so,
'after wagging her tail and grinning, she would perform this act of
propitiation as nearly as practicable in the absence of a dead bird.
Seeking about, she would pick up a dead leaf, a bit of paper, a twig, or
other small object, and would bring it with renewed manifestations of
friendliness. Some kindred state of mind it is which, I believe, prompts
the savage to certain fetichistic observances.'[12] So far the dog could
go, but she could not have imagined the presence of an unseen being and
behaved towards him in the same manner. Another significant point is that
the absent objects towards which animals may direct their actions are
always, so far as one may judge, identical with those actually sensed by
them at some time, _i.e._ their behaviour never shows that they have
transformed, imaginatively, objects with which their senses have made them
familiar. Whereas man can not only believe in the presence of unseen
objects, but he can also imagine beings never actually sensed by him, and
behave towards them according to the traits and capacities with which he
has endowed them.
There are observations on record which compel the qualification of the
assertion, I may have seemed to make in the preceding paragraph, of a
clean break between man and animals. Certain dogs are thrown into
paroxysms of fear by peals of thunder, and run into hiding. Darwin relates
how his dog, 'full grown and very sensible,' growled fiercely and barked
whenever an open parasol standing at some distance was moved by a slight
breeze. He is of the opinion that the dog 'must have reasoned to himself,
in a rapid and unconscious manner, that movement without any apparent
cause indicated the presence of some strange living agent, and that no
stranger had a right to be on his territory.'[13] Romanes, in a short and
interesting paper entitled 'Fetichism in Animals,'[14] after reporting the
preceding illustration, relates this observation touching a remarkably
'intelligent,' 'pugnacious,' and 'courageous' dog. 'The terrier [Skye] in
question, like many other dogs, used to play with dry bones, by tossing
them in the air, throwing them to a distance, and generally giving them
the appearance of animation, in order to give himself the ideal pleasure
of worrying them. On one occasion, therefore, I tied a long and fine
thread to a dry bone, and gave him the latter to play with. After he had
tossed it about for a short time, I took an opportunity, when it had
fallen at a distance from him, and while he was following it up, of gently
drawing it away from him by means of the long and invisible thread.
Instantly his whole demeanour changed. The bone which he had previously
pretended to be alive, now began to look as if it really were alive, and
his astonishment knew no bounds. He first approached it with nervous
caution as Mr. Spencer describes, but as the slow receding motion
continued, and he became quite certain that the movement could not be
accounted for by any residuum of the force which he had himself
communicated, his astonishment developed into dread, and he ran to conceal
himself under some articles of furniture, there to behold at a distance
the uncanny spectacle of a dry bone coming to life.' Certain instances of
instinctive fear of harmless things may help to interpret the preceding
observations. G. Stanley Hall mentions a little girl who would scream when
she saw feathers floating through the air. To keep another child in a
room, it was sufficient to place a feather in the keyhole.[15]
Shall we hold that these animals interpreted the unusual experiences
reported above as the work of hidden beings of the kind known to them, or
shall we agree rather with Lloyd Morgan, Romanes, Spencer, and others, in
thinking that their behaviour indicated merely surprise, astonishment, and
fear at the unexpected movements of familiar objects? That explanation is
probably sufficient. The failure of an object to fit in with the
psycho-physiological attitude of expectation which past experience has
taught us to assume brings about the sudden disturbance called surprise,
astonishment, or fear. It is in substance what would happen to any person
if, on opening his bed in the dark, his hands came in contact with some
object concealed in it. Personalisation of the unexpected object is not
necessary to cause fright. And yet, who shall say that in none of these
instances is there anything corresponding to the anthropomorphic
interpretation of natural event so common among men of low culture? Does
not the growling of Darwin's dog indicate as much? It would seem to me an
unjustifiably dogmatic assertion to affirm that no animal can think of
thunder as caused by a being like those with which his senses have made
him familiar. Were he to do so, he would do as the savage who projects his
ordinary notion of animated beings behind inanimate phenomena. Creative
imagination is not any more required for such an interpretation than for
the belief in survival after death when it is suggested by apparitions in
dreams or trances. It is quite in point, at any rate, to affirm that man
and beasts are much nearer to each other, regarding the possibility of
interpreting animistically certain striking natural events, than most
people are willing to admit.
The most significant difference between men and animals is not found in
the fact that animals may be unable to interpret animistically certain
striking natural phenomena--an opinion open to question--but in their
inability to _fix_ by means of communicable signs any fleeting animistic
interpretation which might chance to cross their mind. Without the
advantage conferred by speech, upon even the lowest savages, to hold,
clarify, keep alive, and bring to fruition impressions of this evanescent
nature, I do not see how a stable belief in animism could have been
established. The decisive rôle played by language appears forcibly when
one considers the part it takes in introducing dream experiences into
waking life. The baffling evanescence of dreams caught sight of on
awakening is familiar to every one. Unless one succeeds in putting them in
linguistic form they are soon completely lost; verbal expression makes
them part and parcel of our mental possessions.
The mental differences between man and the higher animals to which the
presence of Magic and Religion is to be referred, are not in themselves
startling, however considerable their consequences may have been.
Psychological analysis leaves absolutely no standing ground to those who
insist upon interpreting the advent of Religion as the manifestation of
essentially new kinds of powers, of the birth of a 'spiritual life,' for
instance. We hope to have made clear that the use of this term in this
connection constitutes a misrepresentation of the facts.
CHAPTER III
ORIGIN OF THE IDEAS OF GHOSTS, NATURE-BEINGS AND GODS
Every savage tribe known to us has already passed beyond the naturistic
stage of development. The living savages believe in ghosts, in spirits,
and all of them, perhaps, also in particular spirits elevated to the
dignity of gods. Whence these ideas of unseen personal beings? They may be
traced to four independent sources.
(1) _States of temporary loss of consciousness--trances, swoons, sleep,
etc._--seem in themselves sufficient to suggest to ignorant observers the
existence of 'doubles,' _i.e._ of beings dwelling within the body,
animating it, and able to absent themselves from it for a time or
permanently. These alleged beings have been called 'ghosts' or 'souls.'
The belief in a second life of the dead would also spring easily enough
from these observations.
(2) _Apparitions in sleep, in the hallucinations of fever, of insanity,
etc._, of persons still living or dead, seem also sufficient to lead to a
belief in ghosts and in survival after death.
These two distinct classes of facts have no doubt co-operated in the
production of the belief in ghosts, so that I shall refer to them in the
sequel as the double origin of the ghost-belief. Echos, and reflections in
water and in polished surfaces may have played a subsidiary rôle in
establishing, or confirming, the belief in ghosts and in spirits.
(3) When discussing animal behaviour, we saw reasons to admit that a
fleeting personification of objects moving in an unusual way might be
within the mental possibilities of the higher animals. The third
independent source of belief in unseen personal agents is _the spontaneous
personification of striking natural phenomena, storms, tornadoes, thunder,
sudden spring-vegetation, etc._ The report of Tanner[16] that one night
Picheto (a North American Chief), becoming much alarmed at the violence of
a storm, got up, offered some tobacco to the thunder and entreated it to
stop, should not excite surprise even though it should refer to the
lowest savage. There is, of course, a long way between the sudden,
temporary, and isolated personification of a natural phenomenon and the
stable and generalised belief in the existence of personal agents behind
visible nature. What we mean to assert here is merely that the
systematised belief can have arisen out of the impulsive and occasional
personification of awe-striking and frightening spectacles.
(4) Many persons have observed with surprise the apparition in young
children of the problem of creation. A child notices a curiously-shaped
stone, and asks who made it. He is told that it was formed in the stream
by the water. Then, suddenly, he throws out, in quick succession,
questions that are as much exclamations of astonishment as queries, 'Who
made the stream, who the mountain, who the earth?' _The necessity of a
Maker is, no doubt, borne in upon the savage at a very early time_, not
upon every member of a tribe, but upon some peculiarly gifted individual,
who imparts to his fellows the awe-striking idea of a mysterious,
all-powerful Creator. The form under which the Creator is imagined is, of
course, derived from the beings with which his senses have made the savage
familiar.
In what chronological order did the three kinds of unseen beings appear?
Which was first: ghosts, nature-beings, or creator? Our present knowledge
does not provide an answer to this query. But this one may venture to
affirm: they need not have appeared in the same order everywhere. It is
conceivable that among certain groups of men the idea of a creator first
attained clearness and influence, while elsewhere the idea of ghosts
implanted itself before the others.
A question of greater importance to the student of the origin of Religion
is that of the lineage of the first god or gods, _i.e._ of the first
unseen, personal agents with whom men entered into relations definite and
influential enough to deserve the name Religion. Are they descended from
ghosts, or are they nature-beings, or creators? I say, 'descended' from
ghosts, for ghosts have not, originally, all the qualities required of a
divinity. They are at first hardly greater than men, though somewhat
different. They must be magnified and differentiated from human beings if
they are to generate the religious attitude. A comparison of the
double-source of the ghost-belief with the source of the belief in
nature-beings suggests the following remarks. Phenomena belonging to
classes one and two necessarily lead to a belief in unseen _man-like_
beings. The familiar relation of ghosts with the tribe, and also the great
number of them, offer a definite resistance to the process of deification.
It is otherwise with the personified nature-powers, for they are not
necessarily, like ghosts, mere dead men in another life. In conceiving of
an agent animating nature, the imagination is not limited to the thought
of a particular human being, not even of a human being at all. The thunder
might be the voice of some monstrous animal. The surpassing variety, the
magnitude and magnificence of nature, stimulate the imagination into more
original activity than the apparitions of men and women in dreams or in
trances. For these reasons, if the choice was between ghosts and
nature-beings, it would be advisable to favour the hypothesis that the
first gods were derived from the spontaneous personification of striking
natural events. But the idea of a creator must take precedence of ghosts
and nature-beings in the making of Religion, for a world-creator possesses
from the first the greatness necessary to the object of a cult, and the
creature who recognises a creator can hardly fail to feel his relationship
to him. A Maker cannot, moreover, be an enemy to those who issue from
him, but must, it seems, appear as the Great Ancestor, benevolently
inclined towards his offspring. Incomparable greatness, creative power,
benevolence, are as many attributes favourable to the appearance of a
Religion in the high sense which, as we shall see, W. Robertson Smith
gives to the word.
The order in which appeared the three kinds of unseen agents is of
considerable importance, for if, for instance, the ghost-belief was first,
it seems unavoidable that ghosts should have been projected into natural
objects and used to explain natural phenomena. It is a task for the
historian of Religion to trace the rise of the idea of God in its several
possible sources, and to indicate in each particular case the contribution
of each source to the making of the earliest gods.
* * * * *
_Belief in the existence of unseen, anthropopathic beings is not
Religion._ It is only when man enters into relation with them that
Religion comes into existence. The passage from the animistic
interpretation of nature, or from the mere belief in ghosts, or in a
creator, to Active Religion is not to be taken as a matter of course, for
it may require on the one hand, as we have said, a transformation of the
man-like or animal-like unseen beings, such as will make entering into
relation with them possible and worth while, and, on the other, the
invention of ways and means to that end, or, at least, the adaptation of
old habits of behaviour to the requirements of the new relation. The
slowness with which our modern ritual has been envolved should be
sufficient to undeceive any one inclined to think that the establishment
of the initial religious rites presented no difficulty.
That a belief in ghosts may coincide with only a pre-religious stage of
culture is not a mere supposition. There are tribes in South-East
Australia among which it is customary to make fires in the graves, and to
place in them water, food, and weapons. Yet we are told that these people
have no system of propitiation or of worship. It appears probable that in
certain instances of this sort, the only motive of action is benevolence.
They wish the ghost to be able to warm himself, eat, drink, and defend
himself against enemies. At times, however, the promptings of fear are
discernible, as, for instance, when the legs of the corpse are broken in
order that he may not roam at night. It seems that originally ghosts are
not endowed with sufficient mischievous or benevolent power to cause the
appearance and the organisation of propitiatory reactions. But even when
some particular ghost or spirit has been fabled into awe-striking
magnitude, systematic worship is not necessarily present. How far the
deification process can go without bringing with it active relations, is
well shown in the case of the 'Father' of the tribes of South-East
Australia. Different tribes call him by different names, _Daramulun_,
_Baiame_, etc. Howitt tells us that Daramulun is an anthropomorphic,
supernatural being who used to dwell upon the earth, but now lives in a
land beyond the sky. He can make himself visible, and then appears in the
form of an old man of the Australian race. 'He is imagined as the ideal of
those qualities which are, according to their standard, virtues worthy of
being imitated. Such would be a man who is skilful in the use of weapons
of offence and defence, all-powerful in magic, but generous and liberal to
his people; who does no injury nor violence to any one, yet treats with
severity any breaches of custom or of morality. Such is, according to my
knowledge of the Australian tribes, their ideal of the Head-man, and
naturally it is that of the Biamban, the master of the sky-country.' Now,
despite their belief in this definite, powerful, and benevolent Father,
'there is not any worship of him'; but 'the dances round the figure of
clay and the invocating of his name by the medicine-men, certainly might
have led up to it.'[17] For my part, I see here an instance of what I have
called _Passive Religion_. The point of special interest to us is that
nothing more than these simplest of rites co-exists with the belief in a
being so definite and elevated so high above ordinary spirits and above
man as is this All-Father of the Australians.
It seems highly probable that for generations the relations maintained
with ghosts, nature-beings, and creators, by primitive man were too
occasional and unofficial to permit of our regarding them as anything more
than steps preliminary to the formation of Positive Religion.
Rites and ceremonies serve, in addition to their ostensible purpose, to
complete the work of fixation begun by language. It is only when a belief
has become embodied in a system of actions that it has attained the full
measure of reality and durability of which it is capable.
CHAPTER IV
MAGIC AND RELIGION
In the preceding section, I have compared animal with human behaviour in
an attempt to single out the psychological traits whose presence in man
accounts for his possession of Religion and of Magic. I must now complete
the characterisation and the account of the origin of these two higher
types of behaviour.
The relation obtaining between Magic and Religion has been variously
understood. Most authorities hold that Magic preceded Religion, and that
they are in some way genetically related. In the following pages we shall
argue in support of two opinions: (1) the primary forms of Magic probably
antedated Religion; (2) whether Magic antedated Religion or not, Religion
arose independently of Magic; they are different in principle and
independent in origin.
But the word Magic includes an almost endless number of practices so far
quite inadequately classified. We cannot go on without first marking out
at least its more prominent groups. And since the common bond of these
practices is neither a common purpose (Magic serves to gratify every kind
of desire), nor a common method (the magician's methods are literally
numberless), but the non-personal nature of the power pressed into
service, we shall make use of this last element as a means of
classification. Three groups are thus obtained.
=Magic classified.=--_Class 1_ is characterised by the absence of any idea
of a power belonging to the operator or his instrument and passing from
either one of them to the object of the magical art. To this class belong
many instances of so-called sympathetic Magic;[18] a good many of the
taboo customs; most charms; the casting of lots, when a spirit or god is
not supposed to guide the cast; most modern superstitions, those, for
instance, regarding Friday, the number thirteen, horse-shoes, planting
when the tide is coming in. In these instances the effect is thought of
as following upon the alleged cause, without the mediation of a force
conceived as passing, let us say, from the warm arrow to the wound and
irritating it. The idea of power is reduced here to its least possible
complexity.
_Class 2._ A power, not itself personal, is supposed to belong to the
magician, to his instrument, or to particular substances, and to pass
into, or act upon, the object. Howitt relates how some native Australians
begged him not to carry in a bag containing quartz crystals a tooth,
extracted at an initiation ceremony. They thought that if he did so, the
evil power of the crystals would enter the tooth and so injure the body to
which it had belonged.[19] The potency of many charms is of this nature,
while others have a fetichistic significance, _i.e._ they involve the
action of spirits, and so do not belong to this class. Rubbing oneself
with, or eating the fat, or another portion, of a brave and strong man in
order to make oneself courageous and powerful, belongs also to this second
class, together with most instances of contagion-magic. So does, usually,
the power defined in the following passage and the similar powers believed
in and used in other than Melanesian populations: 'That invisible power
which is believed by the natives to cause all such effects as transcend
their conception of the regular course of nature, and to reside in
spiritual beings, whether in the spiritual part of living men or in the
ghosts of the dead, being imparted to them, to their names and to various
things that belong to them, such as stones, snakes, and indeed objects of
all sorts, is that generally known as _mana_.... No man, however, has this
power of his own; all that he does is done by the aid of personal beings,
ghosts or spirits; he cannot be said, as a spirit can, to be _mana_
himself ... he can be said to have mana.'[20]
_Class 3._ Perhaps a special class should be made of the cases in which
the magician feels as if his will-effort was the efficient factor. This is
often true of spells, of incantations, and of solemn curses. A man
addressing the magical spear, saying, 'Go straight, go straight and kill
him,' feels no doubt that, somehow, by the words in which quivers his
whole soul he directs the spear on its errand of death.
Though Magic does not make an anthropopathic appeal it may, and frequently
does, bring to bear its peculiar coercitive virtue upon anthropopathic
beings. It aims then at compelling souls, spirits or gods, into doing the
operator's will, or in preventing them from doing their own. In
necromancy, spirits are summoned by means of spells and incantations. In
old Egypt the art of dealing coercitively with spirits and gods reached a
high development. Maspero, speaking of a strange belief regarding names,
says, 'when the god in a moment of forgetfulness or of kindness had taught
them what they wanted [the sacred names], there was nothing left for him
but to obey them.'[21] At Eleusis, it was not the name but the intonation
of the voice of the magician which produced the mysterious results.[22]
But whether Magic acts upon personal or impersonal objects, its effective
power is ever impersonal.
I would not give the impression in this attempt at classification, that
the conceptions of the savage are clear and definite. I hold them to be,
on the contrary, hazy and fluid. What appears to him impersonal one moment
may suddenly assume the characteristics of a spirit. _Mana_, for
instance, although usually an impersonal force stored into plants, stones,
animals or men, assumes at times truly personal traits; it becomes the god
himself. One should not be surprised to meet with cases that fall between
rather than in the classes, for the sharp lines of demarcation it suits us
to draw are not often found in nature.
And now we return to our two theses.
=1. The Probable Priority of Magic.=--Certain historical facts might be
held to support the pre-religious origin of Magic. As one descends from
the higher to the lower social levels, Religion dwindles and Magic grows.
In the lowest societies of which we have extensive and accurate knowledge,
the Central Australian tribes, Religion is represented by mere rudiments,
whereas Magic is everywhere and always in evidence. I have had occasion in
a preceding section to quote Howitt with regard to the slight rôle played
by Religion among the South-East Australians. The presence of Religion in
the lives of the tribes inhabiting the central portions of Australia is
still less obvious. Frazer reflects the views of Spencer and Gillen, of
Howitt, and probably of every recent first-hand student of that country,
when he writes: 'Among the aborigines of Australia, the rudest savages as
to whom we possess accurate information, Magic is universally practised,
whereas Religion, in the sense of a propitiation or conciliation of the
higher powers, seems to be nearly unknown. Roughly speaking, all men in
Australia are magicians, but not one is a priest; everybody fancies he can
influence his fellows or the course of nature by sympathetic magic, but
nobody dreams of propitiating gods by prayer and sacrifice.'[23] If we may
trust our knowledge of other savages, the general fact thus affirmed of
the native Australians holds good with regard to every other uncivilised
tribe.
But as the least civilised of existing tribes are far from being
'primitive' in the true sense of the word, it could be argued that Magic
is, after all, the outcome of the corruption of a primitive Religion, of
which almost nothing remains in the savage tribes of the present day. And
so we shall have to rest our case not upon historical evidences, but upon
considerations regarding the psychological nature of Magic and Religion,
and upon analogies we may discover between them and certain facts
observed in children and in adults of uncivilised races.
In his attempt to support the belief in the priority of Magic, Frazer, who
has put every student of Religion in his debt by his monumental work,
affirms its greater simplicity when compared with Religion. The opinion
itself is tenable, but the defence of it, made as it is from the
standpoint of the old English associationism, is unfortunately worthless.
'Magic,' he tells us, 'is nothing but a mistaken application of the very
simplest and most elementary process of the mind, namely, the association
of ideas by virtue of resemblance or contiguity,' while 'Religion assumes
the operation of conscious or personal agents, superior to man, behind the
visible screen of nature. Obviously the concept of personal agent is more
complex than a simple recognition of the similarity or contiguity of
ideas.... The very beasts associate the ideas of things that are like each
other or that have been found together in their experience.... But who
attributes to the animals a belief that the phenomena are worked by a
multitude of invisible animals or by one enormous and prodigiously strong
animal behind the scenes?'[24] It is undoubtedly true that the mind of
man tends to pass from an object to others like it, or experienced at the
same time, but this psychological fact does not in itself account for
Magic. The mind of animals is regulated in a similar manner. In
spring-time the sight of a feather makes the bird think of nest-building,
and the smell and sight of his master's coat brings the master to the
dog's mind. Yet animals do not practise the magical art. This fact should
be sufficient to make one realise the insufficiency of 'a simple
[mistaken] recognition of the similarity and contiguity of ideas' as an
explanation of the origin of Magic. An animal might observe the
colour-likeness between carrots and jaundice (not, however, unless
practical dealings with them had attracted his attention to the colour),
and 'coat' and 'master' might follow each other in a dog's mind. But in
order to treat the coat as he would the master, and in order to eat
carrots or give them to be eaten for the cure of jaundice, there is
required, in addition to the association, the belief that whatever is done
to the coat will be suffered by the master, and that the eating of carrots
will cure the disease. It is the existence of these ideas with their
motor and affective values and of their dynamic connection which makes
Magic possible in beings subject to the laws of association. This
fundamental difference between mere association of ideas and the essential
mental processes involved in Magic, Frazer has completely overlooked. The
difference may be further illustrated by the instance of a dog biting in a
rage the stick with which he is being beaten. He is indeed doing to the
stick what he would like to do to the man. But in attacking the stick he
does not conceive that, although the stick is not the man, the injury done
to it will hurt the man. His action is blindly impulsive, while the form
of Magic in question involves generalisations and other mental processes
not expressed by the laws of association.[25]
If magical actions cannot be deduced from the principle of association,
they can at least be classified according to the kind of association they
illustrate. For, although the various ideas brought together in Magic, in
a relation of cause and effect, are frequently said to have come together
by 'chance,' some of the conditions under which they have in fact become
connected are expressed in the universal laws of association, namely,
association by similarity or contrast, by contiguity or spatial
opposition, and by emotional congruity or disparity. Whenever magical acts
have been classified, it has been according to the principle of
association.[26] But every kind of activity involving mental operations
falls in some of its relations under the laws of association, hence the
relative unfruitfulness of these classifications, hence also our attempt
at grouping magical practices according to a factor of greater
significance, namely, the nature of the power they involve.
=2. The Independence of Religion from Magic.=--The following psychological
arguments appear to me to go a long way towards proving that _magical
behaviour has had an origin independent of the animistic[27] belief_, and
that some of its forms, at least, antedated it, and therefore also
Religion:--
(_a_) The absorbing interest found by young children in the _use_ of
things, and their complete indifference at first to the _modus operandi_,
point, it would seem, to a stage in human development at which the
explanation of things is not yet desired. It is well known that long
before a child asks 'how?' he wearies his guardians with the question,
'what for?'[28] He wants to know what things are good for, and, in
particular, what _he_ can do with them before he cares for an
understanding of their origin, and of their mechanism. This keen interest
in the production of results, this curiosity about the practical meaning
of things, is apparently quite independent of any abstract idea of power.
Since the child passes through a pre-interpretative stage, may we not
admit a corresponding period in racial development during which no
explanatory soul-theory, no animistic philosophy, is entertained? A mental
attitude such as this would make Religion impossible, while it would
provide the essential condition for a Magic of our first class.
(_b_) Children--and adult savages resemble children in many respects--like
to amuse themselves by setting up prohibitions and backing them up with
threats of punishment. 'If you do this,' they will say, 'that will happen
to you.' The 'this' and the 'that' have usually no logical connection with
each other, neither is there in the mind of the child any thought of a
particular kind of power, or agent, meting out the punishment. This kind
of play is strikingly similar to a large number of magical practices. Can
it not be regarded as the prototype of most taboo customs? In taboo there
is usually no logical and no qualitative relation between the prohibition
and the punishment. Neither is there, ordinarily, any notion of a
particular agent carrying out the threat. It involves, it seems, nothing
more than the assumption of a causal connection between two facts brought
together by 'chance' association under the pressure of a desire for food
or success at war, or for the enforcement of a rule of conduct.[29] The
punishment announced is anything on the efficacy of which one may choose
to rely. In Madagascar conjugal fidelity is enforced by the threat that
the betrayed husband will be killed or wounded in the war; among the
indigenous tribes of Sarawak, the belief is that the camphor obtained by
the men in the jungle will evaporate if the women are unfaithful during
the absence of their husbands, while in East Africa, the husband would, in
the same eventuality, be killed or hurt by the elephant he is hunting.[30]
The high sanction which the requirements of social life give to beliefs of
this sort is readily understood.
(_c_) It is a fact of common observation that in passionate moments, men
of every degree of culture act, in the absence of the object of their
passion, more or less as if it was present. A man grinds his teeth, shakes
his fist, growls at the absent enemy; a mother presses to her breast and
talks fondly to the departed babe. The pent-up motor tendencies must find
an outlet. To restrain every external sign of one's desires or intentions
when under great emotional excitement is unendurable pain. By the sick-bed
of one beloved, one must do something, however useless to him. Who shall
say that we do not have in this natural tendency the origin of the large
class of magical acts represented by sticking pins into, or burning, an
effigy? The less a person is under the control of reason, the more likely
is he, not only to yield to promptings of this order, but also to be
seduced by his wish into a belief in their efficacy.
If any one finds it difficult to admit that the savage can so easily be
deceived, I would direct his attention to the well-known instances of
children's self-deceptions. Most of them behave, at a certain age, as if
their dolls were alive and, to all appearances, there are some moments
when they think so. What they think at other moments is another matter. We
need not suppose that the savage cannot take, at times, a critical
attitude and perhaps undeceive himself. It is sufficient that at other
moments, when under the pressure of needs or in the excitement
accompanying ceremonies of considerable social significance or of much
personal importance, he should be able to assume the attitude of the
believer. The behaviour of certain mentally deranged persons throws some
light on this point. Such a person may believe that his hands are always
dirty and be constantly washing them. If reasoned with, he may perhaps be
convinced that they cannot be dirty. Yet a few seconds later he will
exclaim, 'But I feel they are dirty,' and return to the wash-basin. The
savage is under the control of his impulses and feelings to a degree
approaching that of the person instanced. In this connection, the effect
of repetition, and of the tribal sanction obtained by magical customs,
should not be overlooked. They tend to make doubt and criticism next to
impossible.
What need is there in cases of this kind to introduce a middle term
between the actions of the magician and their expected effect? None
whatsoever. The thought of an efficient agent or power passing out of the
magician or of his instrument to work upon the victim is no necessary part
of this type of Magic.
(_d_) The belief at the root of a great variety of magical practices, that
'like' produces 'like,' may have arisen in still other ways than the one
just indicated. Nothing is more common than the invisible passage of
things, be they heat, cold, light, thunderbolt, odours, diseases, etc.,
from one person or object to another, either by contact or through space.
The frequent instances of diseases spreading by infection among men,
animals, and vegetables, seem in themselves sufficient to suggest the
belief that 'like' produces 'like.' The idea of contagion must have
appeared very early indeed. Now, as the savage is quite unable to
distinguish between the different agencies involved in the variety of
experiences of this sort, he cannot draw the line between the 'likes' that
really produce 'likes' and those that do not; hence his very strange
expectations. This class of Magic also is independent of the conception of
an agent effecting the connection between the objects related as cause and
effect.
Since Tylor wrote his memorable work, the doctrine of animism has become
classical. This passage from _Primitive Culture_,[31] 'What men's eyes
behold is but the instrument to be used, or the material to be shaped,
while behind it there stands some prodigious but half-human creature, who
grasps it with his hands or blows it with his breath,' expresses, no
doubt, fairly correctly, a very early philosophy of life. I would not
object even to its being termed the earliest philosophy, provided it be
granted that the progress of the human race was already well under way
when it appeared. But when it is assumed, as it is by many, that the
animistic conception of nature is necessary to, and antedates, the
establishment of Magic, I must dissent and affirm that a very large number
of magical practices neither presuppose, nor in any way involve, a belief
in animism, and that there are good reasons for considering them
original, _i.e._ not corruptions of practices primitively implying that
belief. So much I trust to have shown in the preceding pages.[32]
I do not in the least deny that some of the magical practices in existence
are derived from actions of a different character. Many of the
'superstitions' of civilised countries have had a long history. Several of
the marriage customs; for instance, the cutting of the cake by the bride,
and the lifting of the bride over the threshold, are vestiges of actions
once necessary or useful.[33] But it would be absurd to conclude from the
existence of derived magical practices that Magic, as a whole, is to be
accounted for on a theory of 'lapsed intelligence.'
=Magic and Religion combine but never fuse.=--When ghosts and
nature-beings have become mental possessions of the savage, one may expect
the sphere of Magic to extend so as to include these unseen, mysterious
beings. Why should not the magical power take effect upon ghosts and gods
as well as upon men? The savage, like everybody else, is anxious to use
every available means to secure his preservation and his advancement. Why
then should he not use both Magic and the offering of food? From the
moment Religion appears, until the efficiency of Magic is totally
discredited, we may expect to find these two modes of behaviour associated
in men's dealings with gods, except, however, where the god is clearly
thought of as a world-creator. For the savage could hardly have the
presumption of attempting to control a power he recognises as the maker of
the human race and of the world. Here are two instances of the combination
of Magic with Religion. 'In the Babar Archipelago, when a woman desires to
have a child, she invites a man, who is himself the father of a large
family, to pray on her behalf to Upulero, the spirit of the sun. A doll is
made of red cotton, which the woman clasps in her arms, as if she would
suckle it. Then the father of many children takes a fowl and holds it by
the legs to the woman's head, saying, "O Upulero, make use of the fowl;
let fall, let descend a child, I beseech you, I entreat you, let a child
fall into my hands and on my lap." Then he asks the woman, "Has the child
come?" and she answers, "Yes, it is sucking already."... Lastly, the bird
is killed, and laid, together with some betel, on the domestic plate of
sacrifice....'[34] In this ceremony prayer and sacrifice to a god are
associated with magical practices of a mimetic and sympathetic character.
In a large number of ceremonies, the god is dealt with religiously in
order to secure from him 'power,' and then Magic is added to make the
power effective. In old Egypt one of the formulas according to which the
help of gods was secured began with an appeal to them under their popular
names. It was a prayer which they were free to heed or to neglect. Then
followed, in order to compel them to act, an adjuration introducing the
mystical names, 'those written at birth in their heart by their father and
mother.'[35] The magician not only claimed the power to force the gods to
do his bidding, but also, in case of disobedience, to punish them, even by
destruction. Remnants of magical dealings with gods are found even in the
Christian Religion, if we are to believe the authors quoted by Frazer.[36]
Magic and Religion are so closely interwoven in the life of peoples of
low culture that some authors have affirmed the impossibility of
separating them. Their affirmation need not be contradicted unless it be
intended to mean that originally they were one and the same thing. However
closely interwoven they may be, Magic and Religion remain distinct, as in
the above instances. One might say, borrowing the language of the chemist,
that they do not form compounds, but only mixtures.
* * * * *
=What did Magic contribute to the making of Religion? Frazer's
Theory.=--Our conclusions are, so far, that Magic has had an independent
origin, that it very probably antedated Religion, and that they associate
for common purposes without ever fusing, for they are referable to
different principles. Are we, then, driven to the opinion that even though
Magic should have antedated Religion and been often combined with it in
common undertakings, it has, nevertheless, contributed in no way to the
establishment of Religion? That conclusion is not unavoidable. Frazer's
conception presents an alternative which, however, we cannot accept. As he
recognises not only a fundamental distinction, but even an opposition of
principle between Magic and Religion, he cannot think of allowing the
former a positive influence in the establishment of Religion. Yet he
admits a genetic relation between them: it is, according to him, the
recognition of the failure of Magic that is the cause of the worship of
gods. 'I would suggest,' writes Frazer, 'that a tardy recognition of the
inherent falsehood and barrenness of Magic set the more thoughtful part of
mankind to cast about for a truer theory of nature and a more fruitful
method of turning her resources to account.' When man saw that his magical
actions were not the real cause of the activity of nature, it occurred to
him that, 'if the great world went on its way without the help of him or
his fellows, it must surely be because there were other beings, like
himself, but far stronger, who, unseen themselves, directed its course and
brought about all the various series of events which he had hitherto
believed to be dependent on his own Magic.... To these mighty beings,
whose handiwork he traced in all the gorgeous and varied pageantry of
nature, man now addressed himself, humbly confessing his dependence on
their invisible power, and beseeching them of their mercy to furnish him
with all good things.... In this, or some such way as this, the deeper
minds may be conceived to have made the transition from Magic to
Religion.'[37] Several obvious objections may be raised against this view.
I would remark first of all that Frazer does not discredit the sources of
the belief in ghosts and in nature-beings mentioned in the preceding
section: sleep and trances; apparitions; the impulse to personify great
and startling natural phenomena; the idea of creation. His hypothesis of
the origin of Religion is, therefore, superfluous, unless he could show
that the transition from Magic to Religion took place in the manner he
suggests before the experiences and reflections we have named had given
rise to the idea of god.
The assumption on which Frazer's hypothesis rests, namely, that sagacious
men of wild races persuaded themselves and their fellows of the
inefficiency of Magic, seems clearly contradicted by the history of the
relation of Magic to Religion, and also by the psychology of belief. On
the latter ground, he may justly be accused of attributing neither enough
influence to the will to believe nor to the support it receives from the
many apparent or real successes of Magic. These successes, with the help
of the several ways of accounting for failures without giving up the
belief,[38] were in my opinion sufficient to support a belief in the
efficiency of Magic until long after the birth of Religion. Is not that
the conclusion we must draw from the recent spread of the spiritualistic
movement, not only among the untutored, but even among representatives of
our higher culture? The late gains of spiritism have been made despite
numberless failures, the repeated discovery of deception, and the
satisfactory scientific explanation of a large proportion of the alleged
spiritistic facts, and thanks merely to a desire to believe, and to a few
questionable facts not readily explained by accepted hypotheses. To
suppose that before ghosts and nature-beings had been thought of and made
great enough to exercise a practical influence upon men's conduct, there
had existed, in the barbarous circumstances implied in the supposition,
persons so keenly observant, so capable of scientific generalisation, and
so free from the obscuring influences of passion as to be able to reject
the many instances of apparent success of Magic, is to posit a miracle
where a satisfactory natural explanation already exists.
In _Magic and Religion_, Andrew Lang directs a vigorous and successful
attack upon Frazer's hypothesis.[39] A part of his argument, based on
generally accepted historical data, is summarised in this passage: 'If we
find that the most backward race known to us believes in a power, yet
propitiates him neither by prayer nor sacrifice, and if we find, as we do,
that in many more advanced races in Africa and America, it is precisely
the highest power which is left unpropitiated, then we really cannot argue
that gods were first invented as power who could give good things, on
receipt of other good things, sacrifice and prayer.'[40] He remarks, in
addition, that although one would not expect people who had recognised the
uselessness of Magic and turned to gods, to continue the development of
the magical art, yet, in order to find the highest Magic one has to go to
no less a civilisation than that of Japan, where gods are plentiful.
Although the hypothesis that gods and Religion are the consequence of the
recognition of the failure of Magic, must be rejected, it does not follow
that two modes of activity in the service of common purposes, as are Magic
and early Religion, do not act upon each other in many ways. If Magic was
first in the field, we may believe that the satisfaction it gave to man by
its results, apparent and real, and in providing him with a means of
expressing his desires, tended to retard the establishment of any other
method of securing the same ends. The habit of doing a thing in a
particular manner always stands more or less in the way of the discovery
of other ways of doing the same thing. So that Magic was, in these
respects, a hindrance to the making of Religion. There is, however, a
grain of truth in Frazer's hypothesis. Had Magic completely satisfied
man's multifarious desires, he would, in all probability, have paid but
scant attention to the gods, for it is in times of trial that man turns to
them. It was thus greatly advantageous to the making of Religion that the
inadequacy of Magic should have been felt. Moreover, Magic exercised, in
ways mentioned before, a very considerable influence on the general mental
growth of savage populations; in this sense also it may be said to have
helped Religion.
In a penetrating comparison of Magic with Religion, Marett[41] points out
how easily our third class of Magic--Spell-Magic--assumes 'the garb of an
affair between persons,' and thus approaches very close to Religion. But
even when Magic involves the 'projection of an imperative will,' the
fundamental difference between the two modes of behaviour remains quite
distinct. In ancient Peru, when a war expedition was contemplated, they
were wont to starve certain black sheep for some days and then slay them,
uttering the incantation, 'As the hearts of these beasts are weakened, so
let our enemies be weakened.' If this utterance is to be regarded as
expressing an attempt to project the operator's 'will' upon the enemies,
we are clearly in the realm of pure Magic. But if it is to be understood
as addressed to a personal being, it is a prayer, and then we deal with an
instance of the combination of Magic with Religion.
* * * * *
=Magic and the Origin of Science.=--A common opinion has it that Magic and
not the mechanical type of behaviour is the precursor of science. Before
bringing this chapter to a close, we shall try and determine in what
sense this statement is to be understood.
The reader will remember that after discriminating roughly, in the
introduction, the three modes of behaviour observable in man, I added that
the anthropopathic behaviour becomes Religion when it is directed to gods,
and the mechanical becomes science when the principle of quantitative
proportion it implies is definitively recognised. Frazer, who sets forth
in his great book the magical origin of science, may stand as the
representative of that theory. 'Magic,' he tells us, 'is next of kin to
science,' for science 'assumes that in nature one event follows another
necessarily and invariably without the intervention of any special
spiritual or personal agency. Thus its fundamental conception is identical
with that of modern science; underlying the whole system is a faith,
implicit, but real and firm, in the order and uniformity of nature ... his
power [the magician's], great as he believes it to be, is by no means
arbitrary and unlimited. He can wield it only so long as he strictly
conforms to the rules of his art, or to what may be called the laws of
nature as conceived by him.... Thus the analogy between the magical and
the scientific conception of the world is close. In both of them the
succession of events is perfectly regular and certain, being determined by
immutable laws, the operation of which can be foreseen and calculated
precisely.'[42] Upon this I observe, first, that the acknowledgment of a
fixed relation between actions or beliefs and their results is not
peculiar to Magic; it is implied also in Religion and, more perfectly, in
mechanical behaviour. Salvation is by the right practice, or by the right
faith, or both. The gods cannot be approached and conciliated in _any_
way; worshipper, no less than magician, has to conform to a definite
ritual. In certain not entirely barbarous communities salvation or
damnation is held to follow, respectively, belief or disbelief in no less
than thirty-nine articles! So that 'definite and certain succession of
events,' their determination 'by immutable laws' to the elimination of
caprice, chance, or accident, are expressions which apply, on the whole,
as well to Religion as to Magic. These phrases do not denote a kinship of
Magic to Science, which could not be claimed also by Religion.
Turning to another side of the matter, we observe that Frazer finds it
convenient to minimise, in this connection, the considerable share of the
personal, _i.e._ of the capricious, the incalculable, in Magic. The
personality of the magician introduces an indeterminate and undeterminable
factor about which enough has been said in preceding sections. Nothing
could be in more direct antagonism to the scientific attitude than these
two factors: the influence accorded to the personality of the magician and
the belief in occult powers belonging to particular objects and events. So
that it is truer to the facts to say that the fundamental conception of
science, so far from being identical with that of Magic, is absent from
it. For the essential presupposition of science--the one that
differentiates it alike from Magic and from Religion--is the
acknowledgment of definite and constant _quantitative_ relations between
causes and effects, relations which completely exclude the personal
element and the occult. If that scientific presupposition is absent from
Magic and from Religion, it is implicitly present in mechanical behaviour.
The savage is nearer the scientific spirit and its method when he
constructs a weapon to fit a particular purpose, or when he adjusts his
bow and his arrow to the direction and the strength of the wind, than
when he burns an enemy in effigy, abstains from sexual intercourse to
promote success in the hunt, or exorcises diseases.
What magic shares with science is not the belief in the fundamental
principle we have named, but the desire to gain the mastery over the
powers of nature and the practice of the experimental method. The
experimentation of Magic is, however, so limited and so unconscious that
it can hardly be assimilated to the modern scientific method. If any one
were to turn to history for an argument in support of the thesis defended
by Frazer, and point out that the alchemist is the lineal ancestor of the
scientist, the sufficient answer would be--(1) Historical succession does
not imply continuity of principle. Although Magic, Alchemy, and Science
form an historical sequence, the fundamental principle of the last is not
to be found in the others. (2) The clear recognition of the principle of
fixed quantitative relations is, whenever and wherever it appears, the
birth of Science and the death of both Magic and Alchemy. This last fact
demonstrates clearly the fundamental enmity of these arts to the
scientific principle.
The discovery of the scientific principle was probably almost as much
hindered by the false notions and the pernicious habits of mind
encouraged by Magic, as furthered by the gain in general mental activity
and knowledge which it brought about. Magic, no more than Religion,
encourages the exact observation of external facts, but rather
self-deception with regard to them.
CHAPTER V
THE ORIGINAL EMOTION OF PRIMITIVE RELIGIOUS LIFE
The failure to recognise in Religion three functionally related
constituents--conation, feeling, and thought--is responsible for a
confusing use of the term 'origin.' Some have said that Religion began
with the belief in superhuman, mysterious beings; others that it had its
origin in the emotional life, and these usually specify fear; while a
third group have declared that its genesis is to be found in the
will-to-live. At this stage of our inquiry the reader realises no doubt
that these three utterances are incomplete, inasmuch as each one of them
expresses either the origin, or the original form, of only one of the
constituents of Religion.
I have in the preceding sections dealt with the establishment of the
religious attitude or behaviour and, afterwards, more specifically, with
the origin of the god-idea. The space at my disposal does not allow me to
say anything regarding the rise of the methods by which man entered in
relation with the divine beings in whom he believes. For the same reason,
I shall have to be very brief in dealing with the original emotional form
of Religion.
Two opposed opinions divide the field. The more widely held is that fear
is the beginning of Religion; the other, accepted by a small but weighty
minority, that it has its origin in a 'loving reverence for known gods.'
We shall have little difficulty in arriving at an understanding of the
matter in which these two views, instead of opposing, supplement each
other. The origin of the two emotions mentioned, fear and love, fall, of
course, outside the limits of this essay, since they both existed before
Religion.
'Fear begets gods,' said Lucretius. Hume concluded that 'the first ideas
of religion arose ... from a concern with regard to the events of life and
fears which actuate the human mind.' A similar opinion is maintained by
most of our contemporaries. Among psychologists, Ribot, for instance,
affirms that 'the religious sentiment is composed first of all of the
emotion of fear in its different degrees, from profound terror to vague
uneasiness, due to faith in an unknown, mysterious, impalpable Power.'[43]
The fear-theory is well supported by two classes of interdependent facts
observed, we are told, in every uncivilised people: (1) Evil spirits are
the first to attain a certain degree of definiteness; (2) man enters into
definite relations first with these evil spirits. If the reader will refer
to _The Origin of Civilisation_ by Lord Avebury (Sir John Lubbock), 3rd
ed., pp. 212-215, he will see there how widely true is the opinion
expressed by Scheinfurth:--'Among the Bongos of central Africa good
spirits are quite unrecognised, and, according to the general negro idea,
no benefit can ever come from a spirit.' In many other tribes the good
spirits are known, but the savage always 'pays more attention to
deprecating the wrath of the evil than securing the favour of the good
beings.' The tendency is to let alone the good spirits, because, being
good, they will do us good of themselves, just as evil spirits do us harm
unsolicited.
Shall we, then, admit the fear-origin of Religion? Yes, provided it be
understood that fear represents only one of the three constituents of
Religion, that it is not in virtue of a particular quality or property
that fear is the primitive emotional form of Religion, and that this
admission is not intended to imply the impossibility of Religion having
ever anywhere begun with aggressive or tender emotions. Regarding the
second reservation, it should be understood that the making of Religion
requires nothing found in fear that is not also present in other emotions.
If aggressive emotions are not conspicuous at the dawn of Religion, it is
only because it so happens that the circumstances in which the least
cultured peoples known to us live are such as to keep fear in the
foreground of consciousness. Fear was the first of the well-organised
emotional reactions. It antedated the human species, and appears to this
day first in the young animal, as well as in the infant. No doubt, before
the protective fear-reaction could have been established, the lust of life
had worked itself out into aggressive habits, those for the securing of
food, for instance. But these desires did not, as early as in the case of
fear, give rise to any emotional reaction possessing the constancy,
definiteness, and poignancy of fear. The place of fear in primitive
Religion is, then, due not to its intrinsic qualities, but simply to
circumstances which made it appear first as a well-organised emotion
vitally connected with the maintenance of life. It is for exactly the same
reason that the dominant emotion in the relations of uncivilised men with
each other, and still more evidently so, of wild animals with each other,
is usually that of fear.
When I said that fear need not have been the original religious emotion, I
had in mind the possibility of groups of primitive men having lived in
circumstances so favourable to peace and safety that fear was not very
often present with them. This is not a preposterous supposition. Wild men
need not, any more than wild animals, have found themselves so situated as
to be kept in a constant state of fright. If the African antelope runs for
its life on an average twice a day, as Francis Galton supposes, the wild
horse on the South American plains, before the hunter appeared on his
pastures, ran chiefly for his pleasure. Travellers have borne testimony to
the absence of fear in birds inhabiting certain regions. But, it may be
asked, would Religion have come into existence under these peaceful
circumstances? A life of relative ease, comfort, and security is not
precisely conducive to the establishment of practical relations with gods.
Why should happy and self-sufficient men look to unseen, mysterious beings
for an assistance not really required? Under these circumstances the
unmixed type of fear-Religion would never have come into existence.
Religion would have appeared later, and from the first in a nobler form.
In such peoples a feeling of dependence upon benevolent gods, regarded
probably as Creators and All-Fathers, eliciting admiration rather than
fear or selfish desire, would have characterised its beginnings. This
possibility should not be rejected _a priori_.
The other theory is well represented by W. Robertson Smith. He denies that
the attempt to appease evil beings is the foundation of Religion. I quote:
'From the earliest times religion, as distinct from magic or sorcery,
addresses itself to kindred and friendly beings, who may indeed be angry
with their people for a time, but are always placable except to the
enemies of their worshippers or to renegade members of the community. It
is not with a vague fear of unknown powers but with a loving reverence for
known gods who are knit to their worshippers by strong bonds of kinship,
that religion, in the only sense of the word, begins.'[44] One may agree
with Robertson Smith without denying that certain practices intended to
avert impending evils preceded the establishment of affectionate relations
with benevolent powers. As a matter of fact, our author admits this fully.
What he denies is that the attempt to propitiate, in dread, evil spirits,
is Religion. It cannot be doubted that the inner experience as well as
the outer attitude and behaviour of a person are substantially different
when he seeks to conciliate a radically evil being and when he communes
with a fundamentally benevolent one. Yet in both cases an anthropopathic
relation with a personal being is established. In this respect, both stand
opposed to magical behaviour. This common element is so fundamental that
it seems to us advisable to make the name Religion include both types of
relation. And since they differ, nevertheless, in important respects, the
phrases _Negative_ Religion may be used to designate man's dealings with
radically bad spirits, and _Positive_ Religion his relations with
fundamentally benevolent ones.
Positive Religion is at first not at all free from fear. The benevolent
gods are prompt to wrath, and cruelly avenge their broken laws. The more
striking development of religious life is the gradual substitution of love
for fear in worship.[45] This is one more reason for not completely
dissociating the propitiation of evil spirits from the worship of kindly
gods.
CHAPTER VI
CONCLUDING REMARKS ON THE NATURE AND THE FUNCTION OF RELIGION
The organised, historical Religions are sufficiently described, in their
objective aspect, as systems of practical relations with unseen,
hyperhuman, and personal Beings. The experiences in which this type of
Religion consists, when subjectively considered, are the states of
consciousness correlated with the aforesaid relations. Judged according to
this definition, several savage tribes and a very large number of persons
among civilised peoples would have to be accounted non-religious. Most of
them may, however, lay claim to what we have called Passive Religiosity.
In these concluding pages we propose to give increased precision and
coherence to the conception of Religion presented in this essay. We shall
do so under two heads, (1) Passive and (2) Godless Religions.
1. Andrew Lang's polemic against Frazer's definition of Religion will
serve as a convenient text for the introduction of what we wish to say
under the first head. According to the habit of anthropologists, Frazer
has put forward as the mark of Religion the _propitiation or the
conciliation_ of personal beings superior to man and believed to direct
and control the course of nature and of human life. Lang objects, and very
properly, that this definition is too narrow. 'I mean by Religion,' says
he, 'what Mr. Frazer means and more. The conciliation of higher powers by
prayer and sacrifice is Religion, but it need not be the whole of
Religion. The belief in a higher power who sanctions conduct and is a
father and a loving one to mankind is also Religion,'[46] although it
should not be accompanied by request for benefits. The presence in the
higher societies and even at the dawn of civilisation of persons strangers
to any religious rite, yet influenced by a belief in divine beings cannot
be denied. With regard to the most barbarous of the Australian savages
Howitt writes: 'If Religion is defined as being the formulated worship of
a divinity, then these savages have no Religion; but I venture to assert
that it can be no longer maintained that they have no belief which can be
called Religion, that is, in the sense of beliefs which govern tribal and
individual morality under a supernatural sanction.'[47] The reader will
remember that we included under the term Religion the amorphous relations
to which Howitt alludes. But the difference, objective and subjective,
between the organised Religions, let us say that of Saint Ignatius, and
the guiding and restraining influence exercised upon an African savage or
a Parisian deist by the apprehension of a Great Ruler, justifies the use
of the differentiating appellations, Passive and Active Religion.
We take this opportunity of remarking how difficult it is even for
particularly clear-headed persons to keep Religion distinct from
philosophy. Lang was ill-advised enough to write in the same place, 'If
men believe in a potent being who originally made or manufactured ...
things, that is an idea so far religious that it satisfies, by the figment
of a supernatural agent, the speculative faculty.' What has 'the
speculative faculty' to do with Religion? As little as the gratification
of the æsthetic or of any other 'faculty,' _i.e._ nothing at all. The
outcome of speculative thinking is _philosophy_, of which Religion may
make use, but that is not a reason for confusing it with philosophy. The
religious experience consists not in seeking to understand God, but in
fearing Him, in feeding upon Him, in finding strength and joy in Him. If
believers in Ruling Powers may be called religious, it is not because they
possess _an idea_ of these powers, but in virtue of the guiding and
inspiring influence these powers exert upon them.
2. _The Godless Religions._--We have found it convenient up to this point
to speak as if Power had to be personal in order to become the centre of a
Religion. That view would exclude original Buddhism, the Religion of
Humanity, and several other varieties of mental attitudes generally
regarded as religious. The significant fact that until recently every
existing historical Religion was a worship of a personal Divinity, is not
a sufficient reason for refusing to recognise other types. The affinity
between the worship of a God and certain relations maintained with
non-personal sources of power is substantial enough to be recognised by
the use of a name common to both.
What are the Religions that dispense with a God? Original Buddhism, and
the Religion of Humanity formulated by A. Comte, are the only ones
possessing a somewhat definite form and organisation. The Buddha Gautama
discovered and offered to man a way of salvation in which the efficient
power was not an external, personal power, but an indwelling, psychic
principle. But the disciples speedily deified the Master who had enjoined
them to adore no one, and substituted for his teaching the worship of the
God Gautama. So that, almost as soon as born, Buddhism ceased to exist as
a Godless Religion.
'Humanity' is qualified to become the centre of a Religion because its
service accomplishes for man in essence and by similar methods precisely
what the acknowledged Religions do for their disciples.[48] I quote from
A. Comte: 'Around this Real, Great Being, immediate instigator of each
individual and collective existence, our feelings and desires centre as
spontaneously as do our ideas and actions.... More readily accessible to
our feelings as well as to our thinking [than the chimerical beings of the
existing Religions], because of an identity of nature which does not
preclude its superiority over all its servants, a Supreme Being such as
this excites deeply an activity destined to preserve and to improve it
[the Supreme Being].'[49] The claim of original Buddhism and of Comtism to
be called Religions is, in our opinion, legitimate, because they each
provide an inclusive, non-material source of power and a method of drawing
upon it.
But the term Religion is used by some in a still wider sense. Professor J.
R. Seeley, for instance, bestows that valued name upon 'any habitual and
permanent admiration.'[50] Should we concur in this extension, it would be
difficult to stop anywhere. We should have to admit almost anything which
any one may have a fancy for designating by that much-abused word, even to
'the sense of eternity in connection with our higher experiences,' and
'the feeling of reality and permanence of all we most value.' But since
the function of words is to delimitate, one defeats the purpose of
language by stretching the meaning of a word until it has lost all
precision and unity of meaning. We would therefore throw out of our
definition anything which did not include:--(1) A belief in a great and
superior psychic power--whether personal or not. (2) A dynamic
relation--formal and organised or otherwise--between man and that Higher
Power tending to the preservation, the increase, and the ennobling of
life. This conception is broad enough to include even the uncrystallised
form of Religion conditioned, in the words of Professor James, by 'an
assurance that this natural order is not ultimate, but a mere sign or
vision, the external staging of a many-storied universe, in which
spiritual forces have the last word and are eternal.'
* * * * *
Active Religion may properly be looked upon as that portion of the
struggle for life, in which use is made of the Power we have roughly
characterised as psychic and superhuman, and for which other adjectives,
'spiritual,' 'divine,' for instance, are commonly used. In this biological
view of Religion, its necessary and natural spring is the same as that of
non-religious life, _i.e._ the 'will to live' in its multiform
appearances, while the ground of differentiation between the religious and
the secular is neither specific feelings nor emotions, nor yet distinctive
impulses, desires, or purposes, but the nature of the force which it is
attempted to press into service. The current terms, 'religious feeling,'
'religious desire,' 'religious purpose,' are deceptive if they are
supposed to designate affective experiences, desires and purposes met
with only in religious life.
The conception of the Source of Psychic Energy, without the belief in
which no Religion can exist, has undergone very interesting
transformations in the course of historical development. The human or
animal form ascribed to the gods in the earlier Religions became less and
less definite. At the same time the number of gods decreased. The
culmination of this double process was Monotheism, in which the One,
Eternal, Creator and Sustainer of life was no longer necessarily framed in
the shape of man or beast: though still anthropopathic, he might be
formless. Sympathy, love, and justice were among his attributes. In a
second phase, this formless, but personal, God was gradually shorn of all
the qualities and defects which make individuality. He became the
passionless Absolute in which all things move and have their being. Thus,
the personifying work of centuries is undone, and humanity, after having,
as it were, lived throughout its infancy and youth under the controlling
eye and with the active assistance of personal divinities, on reaching
maturity, finds itself bereft of these sources of life. The present
religious crisis marks the difficulty in the way of an adaptation to the
new situation. As belief in a God seems no longer possible, man seeks an
impersonal, efficient substitute, belief in which will not mean disloyalty
to science. For man will have life, and have it abundantly, and he knows
from experience that its sources are not only in meat and drink, but also
in 'spiritual faith.' It is this problem which the Comtists, the
Immanentists, the Ethical Culturists, the Mental Scientists are all trying
to solve. Any solution will have the right to the name Religion that
provides for the preservation and the perfectioning of life by means of
faith in a superhuman psychic Power.
Printed in Great Britain by T. and A. CONSTABLE LTD. at the Edinburgh
University Press
FOOTNOTES:
[1] _The Non-Religion of the Future_, p. 2.
[2] _The Golden Bough_, 2nd edition, i. p. 63.
[3] _Outlines of a Philosophy of Religion_, p. 27.
[4] _The Varieties of Religious Experience_, pp. 53, 38, abbreviated and
rearranged.
[5] Wündt's _Ethics_, English tr., iii. p. 6.
[6] H. B. Davis has this to say on the power of generalisation of the
raccoon, a very intelligent animal: 'When an animal [raccoon] is forced to
approach a new fastening from a new direction, it is often as much
bothered by it as by a new fastening. Nevertheless, in course of time the
animals seem to reach a sort of generalised manner of procedure which
enables them to deal more promptly with any new fastening (not too
different from others of their experience).' 'The Raccoon: A Study in
Animal Intelligence,' _Amer. Jr. of Psy._, Oct. 1907, p. 486.
[7] _Meditationes_, ii. p. 10, Amsterdam, 1678.
[8] C. Lloyd Morgan, _Introduction to Comparative Psychology_ (The
Contemporary Science Series, 1894), p. 89.
[9] F. M. Davenport, _Primitive Traits in Religious Revivals_, Macmillan
(1905), p. 36; quoted from the Fourteenth Annual Report of the [Amer.]
Bureau of Ethnology, p. 761.
[10] E. M. Curr, _The Australian Race_, iii. p. 547, as quoted by Frazer,
_The Golden Bough_, 2nd ed., i. p. 13.
[11] A. W. Howitt, _The Native Races of South-East Australia_ (1904), p.
373.
[12] _Principles of Sociology_ (3rd edition, 1885), i. Appendix A, p. 788.
[13] _The Descent of Man_, 2nd ed., i. p. 145.
[14] _Nature_, xvii. (1877-78), pp. 168-169. Comp. Lloyd Morgan, _Introd.
to Comparative Psychology_, p. 92 ff.
[15] A Study in Fears, _Am. Jour. of Psy._ (1897), viii. p. 166.
[16] Lord Avebury, _On the Origin of Civilisation_ (3rd edition, 1875), p.
212.
[17] _The Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, pp. 500, 506-508.
[18] Hang a root of vervain around the neck in order to cause the
disappearance of a tumour: as the plant dries up, so will the tumour. If
the fish do not appear in due season, make one of wood and put it into the
water. Keep the arrow that has wounded a friend in a cool place that the
wound may not become inflamed.
[19] _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, xiii. (1884), p. 456,
quoted by Frazer.
[20] Dr. R. H. Codrington, _The Melanesians_ (Clarendon Press, 1891), p.
191.
[21] 'Études de mythologie et d'archéologie égyptiennes' (Paris, 1903),
_Bibliothèque Égyptologique_, ii. p. 298.
[22] Foucart, 'Recherches sur la Nature des Mystères d'Eleusis,' _Mémoires
de l'Institut_, xxxv. 2nd part, pp. 31-32. Comp. Maspero, _ibid._, p. 303.
[23] 'The Beginnings of Religion,' _Fortn. Rev._, lxxxiv. (1905), p. 162.
Comp. _The Golden Bough_, 2nd ed., i. pp. 71-73.
[24] _The Golden Bough_, 2nd ed., i. p. 70. Oldenburg (_Die Religion des
Veda_, Berlin, 1894) was first, I believe, in holding to a pre-religious
magical stage of culture. But it is Frazer who first made a clear
separation, not only between Magic and Religion, but also between Magic
and belief in spirit-agents.
[25] Comp. R. R. Marett, 'From Spell to Prayer,' _Folk-Lore_, xv. (1904),
pp. 136-141.
[26] The latest classification is probably that of Frazer in _Lectures on
the Early History of the Kingship_ (Macmillan, 1905), p. 54. A. van
Gennep, in a review of that book in the _Revue de l'Histoire des
Religions_, liii. pp. 396-401, offers a somewhat different classification.
[27] I use 'animism' in the sense which Tylor gave it, _i.e._ a belief in
the animation of all things by beings similar to the 'souls' or 'ghosts'
revealed to the savage by dreams and other natural experiences.
[28] The interested reader will find a summary of observations on this
topic in Alex. F. Chamberlain's _The Child_ (The Contemporary _Science
Series_, 1900), pp. 147-148. See also Sully, _Studies of Childhood_, p.
82.
[29] See, for instance, many of the prohibitions included in the
initiation ceremonies of the Australians in Spencer and Gillen, _loc.
cit._, chapters vii-ix.
[30] Frazer, _The Golden Bough_, 2nd ed., I. pp. 29-31.
[31] Fourth ed. (1903), i. p. 285.
[32] The word _naturism_ should be adopted as a name for the pre-animistic
and pre-religious stage of culture, a stage corresponding to the one
through which a child passes before he inquires into hidden causes and
mechanisms. See on this an excellent little book published in this series,
_Animism_, by Edward Clodd, pp. 22-25.
[33] Lord Avebury, _On the Origin of Civilisation_ (3rd ed., 1875), pp.
113-114.
[34] _The Golden Bough_, i. p. 19.
[35] Maspero, _loc. cit._, pp. 298-299.
[36] Amélie Bosquet, _La Normandie romanesque et merveilleuse_ (Paris et
Rouen, 1845), p. 308.
[37] _Loc. cit._ i., pp. 75-78.
[38] A widespread opinion ascribes the failures of the magician to a rival
or to the counter-influence of some evil spirit.
'If a man died in spite of the medicine-man, they [the Chepara of
South-East Africa] said it was Wulle, an evil being, that killed
him.'--Howitt, _loc. cit._, p. 385.
[39] Chap. iii.
[40] _Ibid._, p. 59.
[41] R. R. Marett, 'From Spell to Prayer,' _Folk-Lore_, xv. (1904), pp.
132-165.
[42] _Loc. cit._, pp. 61-62. In the third volume (pp. 458-461), a change
seems to have taken place in the author's opinion. What it amounts to, I
cannot exactly make out.
[43] _The Psychology of the Emotions_, p. 309.
[44] _The Religion of the Semites_, p. 55.
[45] See, on this development, my article, 'Fear, Awe, and the Sublime in
Religion,' _American Jr. of Religious Psy. and Educ._, ii. p. 1.
[46] _Magic and Religion_, pp. 48-49, 69.
[47] 'On some Australian Customs of Initiation,' _Jr. of the Anthrop.
Inst._, xiii. (1883-1884), p. 459.
[48] F. Harrison, _Moral and Religious Socialism_, New Year's Address,
1891.
[49] A. Comte, _Catéchisme Positiviste_, ed. Apostolique (1891), pp. 53,
55.
[50] _Natural Religion_, Macmillan (1882), p. 74.
Transcriber's Notes:
Passages in italics are indicated by _italics_.
Passages in bold are indicated by =bold=.
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